3 posts tagged “novella”

  Tomorrow is the reading of an excerpt from my novella.  I'm trying not to get nervous.  As I said to my psychiatrist, most of it is out of my hands, what I can do, I will.  I got my threadless shirt yesterday and I'm wearing it today.  It says;
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
  I'm totally listening Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta, from Office Space.  It's so funny.

  I was in the  waiting room at the doctors office so I picked up a TV Guide and I was so  happy because there was an interview of Ira Glass in it!  Somebody loves me.

  I'm in love with Derek Nievergelt, this really good freelance bassist.  He's half Swiss and half Filipino.  He's pretty.

  Hmm.  I need to practice reading, and then the uke.

  Oh yeah, I need a title for my novella, but I don't know what it should be.

  In Literary Media yesterday we read people's novella's and I'm sorry, but so many of them are just so, plot driven.  It's not about the plot it's about the character, that's what makes a book good.  But I don't want to insult them.  It's hard because no matter what anyone says you take criticism badly, at least that's my opinion.  You want people to like what you do.  I know that I do. 

  I take criticism awfully, no matter how hard I try.  One time I auditioned two pieces for the reading and no one really liked them.  The second time I read something people were talking about how they were afraid people would fall asleep to it.  That day my mom was picking me up and I just went into the car and cried because nobody liked my writing.  Then I auditioned a third piece, and everyone liked it.

  My self-esteem I often feel, is in other people's hands.

  Which is an horrible thing you can't like everybody and everybody's not going to like you.  It's part of human nature, all you can try and do is be nice to everyone.

My Dad said the title by the way.

Today was so sleepy.  By lunch time all I wanted to do was go home and sleep.  This could be because I'm afraid the next chapter of my novella is really bad.

Have I mentioned how I got the character who is the center of my novella?

Well, most days my sister and I have to go home on the metro.  One day we were two stops away from our neighborhood and this man came on.  He looked about twenty-five.  He was fairly handsome, not great looking but not unattractive.  He had on a blue suit with a blue and yellow striped tie.  Firstly his tie and his suit matched far to well for him to pick it out.  Oh and he had a suitcase-y bag.

Then I saw his shoes.  They were pretty average looking work shoes.  A little shiny, but fine.  But then I noticed the rubber bottom of the shoes and the actually shoes were detached. 

And that was it.  He was perfect.  He looked like he was trying so hard, with his tie and suit but his shoes inevitably gave him away.  So I created a character based on him.  His name(the character's) is Luke. 

I'm pretty serious about names not being too insane.  I think that the name shouldn't overshadow the person.  The character in itself you should remember, not the name.  Sure Epiphany Blue is pretty but it doesn't do anything.  I find crazy names harder to relate to.  That's just my belief of course.  You could make a point that I come from a family of Margaret, Alice, Nora, Helen, Charles, Susan and Michael. 

But then I would say stop being a stalker.

The title by the way, is something my scary(but awesome) writing teacher said after I told him his shoes were shiny.